Bears game with Jason and Brian

The weekend after Labor Day my (Charlie) friend Brian came into Chicago.  Brian and Jason are my two best friends from high school, and we try once a year to get together in one of our cities.  It doesn't work out every year, but this year me and Jason are now both living in Chicago - so only Brian has to travel to make it happen these days.  And the Bengals were playing at Soldier Field this year, so it seemed perfect.

Brian came into town the weekend of September 7-8.  I was in the midst of marathon training at this point, so I couldn't do anything Friday night, and Saturday I ran 18 miles (which is the 2nd longest training run I'd do).  Saturday was Wrigley Field for a Cubs game, which was interesting trying to walk around after running so much that morning.  We met at Lucky's Sandwich Company on Clark Street for lunch right before heading to the Wrigley Field Bleachers.

The Bleachers are always fun - seats are first come, first served.  We played the famous "dollar game" where you pass around an empty beer cup and put in a dollar when the player makes an out, take a dollar if your guy gets a hit, and take the whole pot if your player hits a homer.  We also ran into a bunch of my college friends who happened to be sitting right behind us in the bleachers - a bunch of guys a year younger were out for a bachelor party.  We hit up the bar scene around Wrigley after the game (Deuce's and Kirkwood's were the specific bars we went to), but went home at a somewhat decent hour to be ready for Sunday.

We went to my friend Jay's tailgate before the game.  Katie didn't go to the game (tickets were pretty expensive), but did get a baby sitter so she could come down to the tailgate.

Jay and his wife Kali were the couple who got married at the Bears game last year, so we felt like we were kind of hanging out at their altar!  Brady is about the same age as their son Bobby.  Someday they will probably duke it out over a Bengals Bears game!  We were conscious of the fact that we were the visiting fans and didn't talk too much trash about the game.  But I thought the Bengals had a really good shot to win.  It was a great game, but the Bengals turned to the Bungles with too many turnovers.  They were winning most of the game, but lost it in the 4th quarter, 24-21.

Still, it was fun to hang out with Jason and Brian - kind of like old times back in Cincy!

Labor Day with Aunt Abby & Grandma Leslie

For Labor Day weekend, we were very excited that Doctor Aunt Abby got the entire weekend off from her surgery residency. Her and Grandma Leslie decided to come visit us.  We spent most of the weekend just hanging out around the apartment and getting some more things organized.  Abby went to town and put together 2 shelves for storage for Brady's toys, 1 shelf for Charlie's baseball card closet and a new desk chair.  And Grandma Leslie kept Brady very entertained while we got several things done around the house.  Brady even chipped in where he could!

Saturday evening we all went to dinner at one of the walkable restaurants in Roscoe Village called John's Place.  Charlie's friend from high school, Jason and his girlfriend Sandy came up for dinner and of course Brady was at the head of the table keeping everyone very entertained.  Abby and Leslie put Brady to bed, and we went for a drink with Jason and Sandy to Northdown Taproom - a bar and cafe with a huge craft beer selection.

And then on Sunday, Charlie wanted to take Abby and Leslie to his favorite joint for wings called Toon's. You may remember reading on this blog that is where we went on our first date using a babysitter in Chicago for their Annual Wings Fest last spring.  The restaurant was unusually packed for a Sunday afternoon.  The food was good as always and we were having a great time till the very end when we had a credit card snafu.  Somehow the credit card got misplaced after we'd given it to the waiter.  Leslie ended up having to call to cancel a lost card, but we got a comped meal.  Oh well!

Abby and Leslie drove back to Akron on Monday.  We had such a good time hanging out with them and are so grateful for all the help!

A week in Chicago with the Caricos

2 weeks after Brady's 1st Birthday party, Charlie had to go to Orlando for a training for work and we had to be officially out of the Wrigley House by August 15th so Bob and Sue decided to come help us. We hired 2 Men and a Truck to move all the big stuff which actually happened back on Monday July 29th but there was lots of little stuff that the movers left behind.  Life was very hectic for a few weeks, one of us would pick Brady up from daycare after work and then one of us would go over to the Wrigley house and load up the car with the clothes and stuff that was left behind.  However, each time we have moved we always say...we just have way too much stuff.  So when Bob and Sue got up here on Sunday August 11th, we had just 4 days to get the remaining stuff out of the house.  I'm sure they were thinking "oh how bad could it be, the movers already took most of the stuff"...but little did they know how much stuff we really had.  Bob and Sue did such a great job getting all the stuff out and cleaning the place up alittle bit and then even helping organize the new place.  We are so thankful to have such nice parents.

Brady quickly found the stairs in the new place and tried to climb them.

On Friday, Katie got to take a day off of work to unpack and get organized but before she could do anything around the house, she needed some Brady time, so her and Grandma Carico went to the zoo in morning.  On Friday mornings in the summer, the Lincoln Park Zoo has a "Story-time" where they have a guy with a guitar play funny kids songs and Brady just loves the music.  After story-time, they dropped Brady off at daycare and got a lot of organizing/unpacking done back at the house.

Even though it was very hectic and stressful, we are very happy in the new place.  We have much more space (3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms) and we can walk to several baby friendly restaurants.

Brady's Birthday Party Weekend

In late July we were preparing to move from Lakeview to Roscoe Village, but we had a special day to prepare for on the first day of August!  Our little baby...

...turned 1 year old!

We had his birthday party down in Cincinnati at Charlie's parents house.  We left Chicago late on Friday, August 2nd and got down to Cincy late that night.  We were tired when we woke up, but also very excited for the big day.  There was quite a bit of preparation to do.  We had to get the cake:

And Charlie and Tom had to head to Party City to get the decorations:

And then we had to do some setting up (or, from this picture, it looks like at least Leslie did some setting up):

There were a lot of people coming to the party.  Charlie's Uncle Jim and Aunt Nancy (now Great Aunt and Uncle!) were in all the way from Oregon.  Brady seemed excited!

Katie's parents Bob and Sue came over for the part as well, and so did Brady's Great Grandpa Chuck.  We had the party out on the front porch, and the weather was very cooperative!

Some of our college friends who live in Cincy came as well.  Katie's friend Lisa came, and Charlie's friends Travis, Craig, and Denny also came.  

Denny's wife Tracy had just had their baby Hank a few months earlier, so it was neat to see their little one.  

And of course Griffey came with us.  He didn't know what to do about all this commotion, but he behaved very well.  Of course the star of the day was Brady!  And he was decked out in party gear.

He enjoyed getting presents, and the most interesting one for us was the action figure of "The Miz", which was given by Travis.  The Miz was a former fraternity brother of Charlie's who is now a WWE wrestler - and has done well enough to have his own action figure!

After opening presents, the next thing was, naturally, the cake!  We sat the cake down in front of him, and at first, Brady was bit unsure.

But by the end, he had made quite a mess of himself and consumed a little too much sugar!

After the party, our family watched Brady while we went with Tracy, Denny, and Lisa to a small local brewery near Charlie's parents house - Rivertown Brewery.  It's a very new brewer that had some good tasting beers.  All in all, it was a great day and we were happy to celebrate it with so many family and friends!

Charlie's trip to Philadelphia

We are way behind, but maybe someday we'll catch up :)

After we had a trip all over Ohio for July 4th weekend, we added one person to the fold on the way back to Chicago.  In Eaton, we picked up Katie's mom and the 5 of us (Charlie, Katie, Sue, Brady and Griffey) headed home.

Charlie had a trip to Philadelphia for training for work.  He had a pretty good time - a group of his co-workers went to the Kid Rock concert across the river in Camden, New Jersey.  Kool & the Gang opened up - and sang some of their famous songs like "Celebrate" - so Charlie thought that was kind of neat.

But the main show was Kid Rock - and it was really good.  Though as a group of accountants, we kind of stuck out as different from the crowd!

Back in Chicago, Grandma Sue stayed and helped Katie out as we prepared to move from Lakeview to Roscoe Village.  Katie had just started work, and Sue helped with Brady and helped pack up our house.  We had a month of overlap - so we could start moving things over on July 15th but didn't have to move out of the Lakeview house until August 15th.  Still, moving was going to be tough, so getting things boxed up a little early was helpful!

Sue flew back on Saturday, and we had another visit that night from Bryan, Kristen and their son Will - they were in from Columbus for a wedding and stayed the night with us.  We were amazed at how "advanced" Will had become!  He was walking and talking - so much happens in between a baby's first and second birthday!  It was so good to see them - and hopefully the L train didn't keep Will up too much that night!

Pictures with Brady

This summer we took some formal pictures with Brady and the family.  We figured we'd show some of the highlights here on the blog!

Katie goes back to work and moving again

So much has been happening since our last life post back in July when we visited Ohio and unforunately we have fallen off the blogging wagon, but here's hoping we can get caught up soon.  July was a very busy and crazy month.  July 1st, Katie started back to work after being a stay at home mom for 11 months.  I had very mixed feelings about going back to work.  Part of me was really sad to be leaving Brady and worried about missing out on his day-to-day activities; Part of me was scared to get back into the workforce and accounting (11 months was quite a long time and I felt like I was starting to forget my accounting skills) and Part of me was excited to get back into the workforce, talk to more adults on a day-to-day basis about something other than baby stuff and part of me just knew that it was time for me to push the big wheel again.

After 3 long months of interviewing, I ended up accepting an Accounting Manager position at a Real Estate Investment Trust (aka a REIT) which is kind of like a mutual fund but instead of stocks and other securities, it invests in real estate and mine specializes in retail real estate.  So we basically own shopping centers across the United States.  I really liked the people when I interviewed and it was especially nice because 2 of them were in similar life boats as me and had babies close in age to Brady. This has been very helpful because not only is it fun to talk about our kids a little bit, it is also nice because they understand when Brady gets sick and I need to leave early to go get him.  The company is much smaller than Toys R Us, which I think will be a good learning experience because I will get to see so many more things.  My group of 9 people is responsible for all the accounting, booking journal entries, closing the books, preparing monthly and quarterly financial statements, preparing the quarterly and annual reports for the SEC, accounting research and taxes.  So far it has been going pretty well, the only downside is I have an hour (sometimes more) commute each way.  Our office is located in Oak Brook on the west side, which seems like a nice suburb.

So the dynamics of our family life has changed dramatically.  The first 11 months, Charlie was the only one pushing the big wheel, so Katie was doing most of the housework and baby work.  But once I started the new job, Charlie really had to step up and help out and he has done great.  We have settled into a pretty nice routine where Katie gets Brady up and ready in the morning, has breakfast with him and takes him to daycare.  Charlie then picks Brady up in the evening and feeds him dinner and sometimes when Katie has to work late, he gives Brady his bath and puts him to bed.  I think all this extra time with Daddy has been great for the the two of them and it has been really neat to see how their bond is getting even stronger.    I sometimes struggle with being away from Brady so much, but my mom reminds me that quality time is better than quantity time and so I try to turn our everyday tasks like eating breakfast and getting ready into good quality time with lots of hugs and kisses.  Oh and  Griffey has his routine down too, he eats his breakfast with Brady and I because he knows Brady will throw him some cheerios.  Brady loves to help put him in his crate and Griffey has a dog-walker 4 days a week and then goes to doggie camp one day a week.  

So another big thing that happened in July was that we moved ....again.  This time just a couple of miles from the old place.  It was with a lot of mixed feelings that we decided to go through the moving process again.  The first place was 2 blocks from Wrigley Field, which Charlie loved but the area was not that baby friendly and the El tracks went through the back yard, which we had sort of gotten use to but it was pretty loud.  We found another rental 2 miles west of the old place in Roscoe Village.  Roscoe is very family friendly, lots of restaurants and all of them have highchairs...hooray!!  There is a cute gelato place that we love walking to and has a train set for kids.  The new place is called a duplex- down, which means that we have the 1st floor and basement of a 3 apartment building.  The basement is finished and has a 3rd bedroom and bathroom which is set up great for grandparents and guests to visit.  Brady has much more room to crawl and play.  The one downside is that Griffey seems to be quite busy with his head of security job, because he unfortunately barks a lot when he hears the people above us coming in and out.   The move was extremely chaotic and stressful and luckily my parents came up to help us get the small stuff that the movers left behind at the old place and unpack, and overall we are much more comfortable here.

Marathon tomorrow!

About 10 hours from now, I'll be starting the 3rd marathon of my life!  I've trained for over 5 months for the Chicago marathon, and while I haven't been able to run as much as I'd like the last 5 or 6 weeks, I have run all of the long runs and I feel pretty ready.  My goal is much different than my first two marathons.  I ran under 4 hours in both of those, but now I'll be happy just finishing - though it would be great if I could clear 4:30 :)

Thanks to everyone who donated to the cause I was raising money for (Team in Training) - which benefits the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.  I'm happy to say I met my fundraising minimum and my stretch goal of $1,500!  Tonight Katie, Brady and I went to the celebration dinner for Team in Training.  It was neat to go to the event, just as it's been neat to hear why so many people are running to fight this disease.

Mostly, I'm happy that I've done something to get in a little better shape and raised money for a cause.  I've often thought about my Aunt Sally, who died of cancer, during some of my runs.  I'm sure I'll think of her sometime tomorrow.

Also, Katie's good friend's dad (John Malone) is currently fighting leukemia, and we are saying prayers for him.  He's a great guy who loves the Chicago White Sox and brewing his own beer, and I hope the advances in medicine enable him to get back to enjoying those hobbies soon!

If you'd still like to donate - you can do so at my page:

http://pages.teamintraining.org/il/chicago13/charliemowry

Driving to, from, and all over Ohio - July 4th weekend

For the July 4th weekend this year, we decided to make a last minute trip back to Ohio.  Katie had just started work on July 1st, so we didn't know whether she would have the 5th off or not until just a few days before.  Luckily she didn't have to be at work on the 5th, so we decided to drive back to Eaton after work on the 3rd, so once again we got in around midnight.  Charlie woke  up early on the 4th and went running to keep up with his training for the marathon and then we were going to head to Cincy for the Reds game but the weather was not cooperating and decided to rain us out.  Instead of the Reds game, we met Grumpa and Tom and Leslie for lunch at Gold Star Chili.  Brady didn't try the chili yet, just stuck with something a little safer for his tummy, chicken fingers and french fries.  The rest of the day we just relaxed at Grandma and Grandpa Mowry's house and then for dinner we took Brady to his first nice steak house - Ruth Chris Steakhouse.  Katie was a bit skeptical of how baby friendly Ruth Chris would be and how Brady would behave but she was pleasantly surprised by both.  The restaurant had high chairs and a kids menu and the waitstaff seemed to love Brady because every time they would walk by they would smile and make him laugh and Brady behaved like a little gentleman.  He tried alittle bit of our steak but mostly ate the mashed sweet potatoes.  Since Brady goes to bed around 8pm and it was raining off and on, we decided it would be too difficult to go see fireworks, so we settled on Graters ice cream.

We also got a picture with the Bengals stadium in the background.  Maybe Brady's first words will be "Who Dey"!

Friday July 5th morning, we drove up to Columbus to meet with our realtor and go inspect our condo.  We hadn't seen the condo since we moved out almost 3 years ago.  We have had very good renters though, so we were very impressed with how well the place looked.  We were contemplating putting the condo on the market, but the renters have been so good that we decided to keep renting it to them till next spring.  It was funny to take Brady to the first house we lived in together, and Katie was getting sentimental and remembering all the good times we had in that condo.

After seeing the condo we went to see a couple of our friends that were around with such short notice.  We got to see Ashley and Craig and their twins which were born just 8 days after Brady, so it was really fun getting the babies together again and swapping stories.  It's funny, Parker was so mobile - crawling all over the place!  Compared with Brady and Elliot, who seemed to be much more content to stay in the same place!  I guess it's true what they say that girls develop a bit faster :)

For dinner we went over to New Albany to meet Jeff and Stacie and their little 2 year old boy, Jack.  We were amazed at how much of a big boy Jack was and Brady and him seemed to get along very well.  Charlie went out for a few drinks with Jeff and some other former KPMG Columbus friends.

The next morning, we drove back to Eaton to pick up our dog and see Grandma and Grandpa Carico.  We stopped in Dayton and meet up with Aunt Abby and Grandma Leslie for lunch at Cassano's Pizza.  Oh how we love Mid-west pizza.  Abby was getting ready to move up to Akron to begin her residency as a surgeon, so she was glad to take a break from packing to meet us for lunch.

Once we got to Eaton, Griffey was so excited to see us again.  He starts jumping all over us and runs around very excited.  We spent the night there and then headed back to Chicago in the morning.   Charlie had another work trip planned so Katie's mom actually rode back with us to come help with Brady while Charlie was out of town and Katie was only on her second week of work.  Oh thank goodness for Grandparents!

Day Care

At the beginning of 2013 we started the process of looking for day care for Brady.  Since Katie was a stay-at-home-mom at that point, a lot of this fell on her shoulders.  She did some research and visited 4 or 5 places.

Out of those, there were a couple that she liked, but you don't get to just say "I like this one, let's go there"!  There's quite a bit involved.  Considerations like location (you want it to be on the way for one of us for work), cost (though they are all EXPENSIVE!), set up, the teachers there, some of their philosophies - those all matter.  Maybe you go through the process then decide getting a nanny makes more sense than daycare!  But, if you go the daycare route, what makes this the most difficult is how you get "in" to a daycare you like.  Most of them have a wait list - and that waitlist is different based on what month you want.  There were 2 that we decided we really liked - they met all of our criteria and, most importantly, we'd be comfortable having our little guy spend his weekdays there.  Out of those two, one of them had a guaranteed slot starting April 1st.  The other, there was no guarantee - it just depended what other families ahead of you on the pecking order did!

So we signed up with a place in Lincoln Park that is on Charlie's way to work.  Then, on April 1st, Katie dropped Brady off for the first time and began her job search in earnest.

Daycare has been a really good place for Brady.  They have a couple of activities for the kids each day, and their meals are "catered" from Whole Foods - so its healthy and diverse.  When Charlie picks him up each day, he's shocked at some of the options they've had - often better than whatever he had for lunch!  And we love that Brady gets to play with other kids.  Even at 8 months, that interaction seems like a good thing.  The teachers tell us that he loves music day which is every Tuesday because they have a special teacher come in with an instrument and he gets really excited for it.

There were certainly some things to get used to.  It's scary to see your first kid go off into "the real world" after he's been home for the first 7 months.

(from Katie) Getting out the door the very first morning was pretty hectic and good thing I wasn't working yet so I had the liberty of not getting myself ready for work yet (that juggle would come a few months later).  Once we got to the daycare, I felt like I was probably more nervous than Brady.  I had wrote out an hour by hour schedule that I gave his teachers and tried to tell them every little thing I could about my little boy like how he is not always good at naps but if you rock him in just the right position then he will fall asleep.   He had seen some of our friends babies and always seemed to like the socialization so I knew Brady would like that part of daycare, but the naps seemed like the hardest part to get use to for me and him.  I was use to cuddling him and laying him in his crib and he was use to his quiet (well sort of quiet ...we did live with the El in our back yard at the time) room with just his crib.  Now he had to get use to a room with 12 cribs lined up in a row.  After I left the daycare, I didn't quite know what to do with myself, I tried to keep myself busy with job searching and cleaning the house and Griffey was an excellent support dog...he was very excited to go on a walk without his baby brother who slows him down on his walks.  And picking him up in the evening never felt so good, when I entered his room, he totally recognized me and got really excited for me to pick him up.

Plus, whenever a kid goes to daycare for the first time, he's going to get sick.  And that means a lot!  And when a kid is sick, he needs to stay home until 24 hours after his fever goes down.  Because of that and a few travel days, we're guessing that Brady made it to daycare for just over half of the days we paid for in that first month.  In hindsight, it was good he started when he did and Katie was job-hunting as opposed to actually working - that made some of those first days easier.

1 year ago today...

Our baby boy was born, after about 17 hours of labor!  Happy birthday, Brady - we love you and have learned so much from you (including patience :))

Here's to many more years as wonderful as your first!